Producer Scott Rudin’s reputation ‘destroyed’ in one afternoon

The email leak showing Scott Rudin’s banter with Amy Pascal over Angelina Jolie and David Fincher has totally wrecked the credibility of the producer in the film industry and it’s painfully embarrassing.

Rudin’s passionate yet unflattering email about Angelina Jolie over the Steve Jobs movie is one of the latest setbacks for Sony, trying to grapple with an unprecedented hack that has forced the company into a painful spotlight.

With leaked financial data being promoted actively on the web and others trying to take Sony apart, it looks like the hack has succeeded in eroding the studio’s reputation and engulfing the people who are associated with it.

Regardless of the email exchange released via Gawker that shows Sony’s co-chairman and Rudin going back and forth on the issue of Fincher directing the Steve Jobs movie, the bigger problem is the fallout for others connected to the studio and how they are going to respond. There are 100 terabytes of stolen data and a treasure chest of emails waiting to be unearthed and published.

It’s unfortunate that this kind of exchange took place and while there will always be heated exchanges and opinions in the movie making process, it’s a public debacle that will be hard to recover from, if ever.

In the film industry people are going to be triple checking all email correspondences and upgrading their security following the hack. If Sony can get attacked others can too. In this particular case, Rudin is being scrutinized for what he said, but that doesn’t mean he should pay a public price for his exchanges even if we disagree with them and others have a huge beef with the way he works.

Someone wants to destroy Rudin and they have succeeded. When is this going to end, or is there more damage to come?

Disclaimer : Film Industry Network will not publish stolen data in news feeds from companies that have been hacked.